What We Are Planting - Part 2

Click here for Part One!

My birthday was in early February and my mom mentioned she was sending me a book as a present. Not only did I get a book (about gardening!) but I also got a subscription to a quarterly gardening magazine and a packet of seeds as well. The book was written by Jere & Emilee Gettle and is called The Heirloom Life Gardener. They own Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company, which is actually located here in Missouri. He gives some history of heirlooms and talks about how when he was about 13 years old he noticed that a lot of once popular heirloom varieties started disappearing from the seed catalogs he loved to look through, so he did what any responsible 13 year old would do and started saving seeds! A lot of those seeds they still sell today. Reading his book gave me a bit of an "ah-ha" moment: why buy regular seeds from a big box store when they offer over a thousand of amazing varieties for the same price? Did you know there are red, yellow, orange, purple, green and striped tomatoes? Or orange fleshed watermelon and spicy red carrots? There are SO many varieties that we've lost touch with by shopping at grocery stores, and we unfortunately end up with bland, lower quality food. No wonder so many people aren't vegetable fans.

fun read, great resource and beautiful photography

So this year we bought seeds from Baker Creek and I am anxiously awaiting
their arrival in the mail. I wanted to buy starters for our tomatoes and peppers again because if anything produces well I want it to be those, and I wasn't sure how well growing my own would go as they require some extra effort and attention. But after seeing all their lovely varieties I decided

What We Are Planting - Part 1

I mentioned earlier that my mom always had a garden when I was a kid. I remember eating something akin to salad (I can't remember what we called it) in the summer when her garden was in full swing. It was essentially a giant bowl of veggies, minus lettuce, that had salad dressing on top. I thought, and still do, that it tasted so much better coming out of the garden than from the store. We are planting quite a bit this year, a lot more than last year, but if you think my garden is large you should check out my parents set up. I will have to get a photo of how big their garden is (they own about 5 acres so they have some extra room, lucky them!), but for now here is some of what they harvest in the summer:

eggplant, watermelon, cantaloupe, peppers, onion,
cabbage, lettuce, potatoes and of course tomatoes!

Can you see where I get my love of gardening? Like I mentioned earlier we are adding onto our garden this year. Our tomatoes went crazy last year, I did not at all expect them to get that large. They vined so much that they